The Phantom Town Mystery

Almost miraculously the car stayed in the road. The girls had been wonderful. White and terrorized, yet neither had clutched at her companion, nor hindered his doing what was best for their safety.

When the car stopped, the front right tire was almost off the road. The girls, quivering with excitement, got out and exclaimed simultaneously, “Another adventure and narrow escape!”

Dick, knowing better than the girls how truly narrow their escape had been, stepped forward, his dark eyes serious, and extended a hand to the cowboy. “Jerry,” he said earnestly, “I won’t say again that I probably know more about managing cars than you do. If it hadn’t been for your quick thinking and skill, we would surely have turned turtle in the sand and if the spark had been on, the car might have gone up in flames.”

But Jerry would not accept the compliment. He shook his head as he removed his sombrero and wiped beads of moisture from his forehead. “Dick,” he said, “thanks just the same, but I reckon I was needlessly reckless. I wasn’t right sure about the sand storm, just at first, but later when I saw that it was heading south all right, I kept on speeding.”

Turning to the smaller girl who stood very still; seemingly calm, though her lips quivered when she tried to smile, the cowboy said contritely, “Little Sister, if you won’t stop trusting me, I’ll swear to never again take any such needless risks.”

Dora, watching the two, thought, “It matters such a terrible lot to Jerry what Mary thinks about him. Some day she’s going to wake up and realize that he loves her.”

Dick was removing his coat, and Jerry, evidently satisfied with Mary’s low-spoken reply, turned to get tools out from under the front seat.

Half an hour later the small car was again on its way. The sun was setting behind the mountains where so recently they had been.

Mary looked back at them. Grim and dark and forbidding they were, deep in shadow, but the peaks were aglow with flame color. The floor of the desert valley about them was like a sea of shimmering golden water; the ripples and dunes of sand were like glistening waves.

“Such a gloriousness!” Dora exclaimed, turning a radiant face toward her companion.

“I can see the color of it in your eyes,” the boy told her, and a sudden admiration in his own dark eyes caused Dora to think that Dick was really seeing her for the first time.

It was lilac dusk when the small car drove along the lane of cottonwood trees and stopped at one side of the Bar N ranch house.

Mrs. Newcomb’s round pleasant face looked out of a kitchen window, then her apron-covered person appeared in the open side door. Her arms were held out to welcome Mary.

“My dear, my dear,” she said tenderly, “how glad I am that you blew over to Bar N.”

“We almost literally did blow over,” Mary laughingly replied. “That is, we were running away from a sand storm.” Then, suddenly serious, she asked, “Oh, Aunt Molly, may I use your telephone at once? Dad doesn’t know that I’m here and he will be expecting us back for supper.”

“Of course, dear. You know where it is, in the living-room.” Then, when Mary had skipped away, Dora following her, Mrs. Newcomb asked, “Has there been a sand storm in the valley? I hadn’t heard about it.”

Jerry was about to drive the small car around to the old barn and so Dick replied, “Yes, Mrs. Newcomb. That’s what Jerry called it. We first saw it on the other side of the range back of Gleeson. Later we saw it far away to the south. It didn’t cross this part of the valley at all, but Jerry thought we’d better not try the Gleeson road.”

“He was wise. I hope the wires aren’t down.”

The good woman’s anxiety was quickly ended by the reappearance of the girls. “All’s well!” Mary announced. Then to Dick, “Your mother answered the phone. She said that they had heard the roaring and had seen some dust in the air but that the storm had passed around our tableland.”

“Well, you girls had quite an adventure and perhaps a narrow escape as well.” Little did Mrs. Newcomb realize that she was repeating the phrase they had so often used that day. “Now, Mary, you take your friend to the spare room and get ready for supper. Your Uncle Henry will be in from riding the range pronto, and starved as a lean wolf, no doubt. He’s been gone since sun-up and he won’t take along what he ought for his mid-lunch.”

The girls were about to leave the kitchen when Jerry called to Dick and away he went into the gathering darkness.

“The boys sleep in the bunk house out by the corral,” Mrs. Newcomb explained. “They’ll be back, I reckon, soon as you’re ready.”

The spare room was large, square, with a small fireplace in it. The bed was an old-fashioned four-poster and looked luxuriously comfortable.

A table, a dresser, two chairs of dark wood and a bright rag rug completed the furnishings.

“How quiet it is,” Mary said. “There isn’t a neighbor nearer than those Dooleys and Jerry said they are way over in the canyon.”

Dora, wondering if Mary could be contented if she became Jerry’s wife, some day in the future, asked, “Would you like to live on a ranch, do you think?”

Innocently, Mary replied as she lighted the kerosene lamp on the bureau, “Why, yes, I’m sure I would, if Dad could be with me.”

Dora sighed as she thought, “Poor Jerry. She’s still blind and I did think today that her eyes were opened.”

CHAPTER XV

IN THE BARN LOFT

“Jerry, what did you do with the box?” Mary managed to whisper as the cowboy drew out a chair for her at the supper table.

“In the old barn loft, snug and safe,” he replied. Then he sat beside her. Dora and Dick, on the opposite side of the long table, beamed across, eager anticipation in their eyes. Although they had not heard the few words their friends had spoken, they felt sure that they had been about Little Bodil’s box.

“We won’t wait for your father, Jerry,” Mrs. Newcomb had said. “He may have gone in somewhere for shelter if he happened to be riding in the path of the storm.”

The kerosene lamp hanging above the middle of the table had a cherry-colored shade and cast a cheerful glow over the simple meal of warmed-over chicken, baked potatoes, corn bread, sage honey and creamy milk, big pitchers of it, one at each end of the table. For dessert there was apple sauce and chocolate layer cake.

Mr. Newcomb came in before they were through, tall, sinewy, his kind brown face deeply furrowed by wind and sun. His eyes brightened with real pleasure when he saw the guests. Dora, he had met before, and Mary he had known since she was a little girl.

He shook hands with both of them. “Wall, wall, if that sand storm sent you girls this-a-way, I figger it did some good after all.”

Jerry glanced at his father anxiously when he was seated at the end of the table opposite his wife.

“Dad, do you reckon any of our cattle were hit by it?” he asked.

The older man helped himself to the food Mary passed him, before he replied, “No-o, I reckon not. I was riding the high pasture when I heerd the roaring. I went out on Lookout Point and stood there watching, till the dust got so thick I had to make for the canyon.”

It was Dick who spoke. “There aren’t many cows pastured down on the floor of the valley, anyway, are there, Mr. Newcomb? There’s so much sand and only an occasional clump of grass, it surely isn’t good pasture.”

“You’re right,” the cowman agreed, “but there’s a few poor men struggling along, tryin’ to eke out an existence down thar. I reckon they was hit hard. I knew a man, once, who had a well and was tryin’ to raise a garden. One of them sand storms swooped over it, and, after it was gone, he couldn’t find nary a vegetable. Either they’d been pulled up by the roots and blown away or else they was buried so deep, he couldn’t dig down to them.”

“Oh, Uncle Henry,” Mary smiled toward him brightly, “I see a twinkle in your eye. Now confess, isn’t that a sand-story?”

“No, it’s true enough,” the cowman replied, when Jerry exclaimed: “Dad, I know a bigger one than that. You remember that man from the East, tenderfoot if ever there was one, who started to build him a house on the Neal crossroad? He heard the storm coming so he jumped on his horse and rode into Neal as though demons were after him. When the wind stopped blowing, he went back to look for his house and there, where it had been, stood the beginning of a sand hill. The adobe walls of his unfinished house had caught so much sand, they were completely covered. That was years ago. Now there’s a good-sized sand hill on that very spot with yucca growing on it.”

“Poor man, it was the burial of his dreams,” Dora said sympathetically.

“He left for the East the next day,” Jerry finished his tale, “and – ”

“Lived happily ever after, I hope,” Mary put in.

Mrs. Newcomb said pleasantly, “If you young people have finished your meal, don’t wait for us. Jerry told me you’re going out to the loft in the old barn for a secret meeting about something.”

“We’d like to help you, Aunt Mollie, if – ”

“No ‘ifs’ to it, Mary dear.” The older woman gazed lovingly at the girl. “Your Uncle Henry and I visit quite a long spell evenings over our tea. It’s the only leisure time that we have together.”

Jerry lighted a couple of lanterns, and the girls, after having gone to their room for their sweater coats, joined the boys on the wide, back, screened-in porch.

“I’ll go ahead,” Jerry said, “and Dick will bring up the rear. We’ll be the lantern bearers. Now, don’t you girls leave the path.”

“Why all the precautions?” Dora asked gaily, but Mary knew.

“Rattlesnakes may be abroad.” She shuddered. “Have you seen one yet this summer, Jerry?”

“Yes, this morning, and a mighty ugly one too; coiled up asleep in the chicken yard. I shot it, all right, but didn’t kill it. Before I could fire again, it had crawled under the old barn.”

“Oh-oo gracious! That’s where we’re going, isn’t it?” Dora peered into the darkness on either side of the path.

“I suppose it had a mate equally big and ugly under the barn?” Mary’s statement was also a question.

Dick replied, “Undoubtedly, but if they stay under the barn and don’t try to climb up to the loft, they won’t trouble us any.”

Mary, glancing up at the sky that was like soft, dark blue velvet studded with luminous stars, exclaimed, “How wonderfully clear the air is, and how still. You never would dream that a sand storm had – ”

She stopped suddenly, for Dora had gripped her arm from the back. “Listen! Didn’t you hear a – ”

“Gun shot?” Dick supplied gaily. “Now that we’re about to open up Little Bodil’s box, I certainly expect to hear one. You know we heard a gun fired, or thought we did, when we passed through the gate in front of Lucky Loon’s rock house, and again when old Silas Harvey was telling us the story. Was that what you thought you heard, Dora?”

“No, it was not,” that maiden replied indignantly. “I thought I heard a rattle.” She had stopped still in the path to listen, but, as Jerry and Mary had continued walking toward the old barn, Dora decided that she had been mistaken and skipped along to catch up. Dick, sorry that he had teased her, evidently at an inopportune time, ran after her with the lantern. “Please forgive me,” he pleaded, “and don’t rush along that way where the path is dark.”

Jerry turned to call, “We’re going in the side door, Dick.” Then anxiously, “You girls can climb a wall ladder, can’t you?”

“Of course we can,” Dora replied spiritedly. “We’re regular acrobats in our gym at school.”

Having reached the barn, Dick opened a low door, then holding the lantern high, that the girls might see the step, he assisted them both over the sill and followed closely.

Mary was standing in the small leather-scented harness-room, looking about the old wooden floor with an anxious expression.

“I was wondering,” she explained when the light from a lantern flashed in her face, “if there are any holes in the floor large enough for those rattlers to crawl through.”

“I’m sorry I mentioned that ugly old fellow,” Jerry said contritely, “and yet we do have to be constantly on the watch, but we’re safe enough now. Here’s the wall ladder and the little loft storeroom is just above us. The only hard part is at the top where one of the cross bars is missing.”

Dick suggested, “We boys can go up first and reach a hand down to the girls when they come to that step.”

“Righto,” Jerry said. “I’ll leave my lantern on the floor here. You take yours up, old man. Then we’ll have illumination in both places.”

The girls had worn their knickers under their short skirts as they always did when they went on a hike or a mountain climb and so they went up the rough wall ladder as nimbly as the boys had done. The last step was more difficult, but, with the help of strong arms they soon stood on the floor of the low loft room. All manner of discarded tools, harness and boxes were piled about the walls.

Dora was curious. “Jerry, why did you select this out-of-the-way place for Bodil’s trunk?”

“Because I reckoned no one would disturb us. The Dooley twins overrun the old barn sometimes but they can’t climb up here with the top board missing.”

The battered leather box lay in the middle of the room and the two girls looking down at it had a strangely uncanny feeling. Jerry evidently had not, for he was about to lift the lid when Mary caught his arm, exclaiming, “Big Brother, what was it Silas Harvey said about a ghost? I mean, didn’t Mr. Pedersen threaten to haunt – ”

The interruption was the crackling report of a gun that was very close to them.

“Great heavens, what was that?” Mary screamed and clung to Jerry terrified.

“It wasn’t a ghost who fired that shot,” the cowboy told them. “It was someone just outside the barn. Don’t be frightened, girls. It can’t be anyone who wants to harm us. Wait, I’ll call out the window here.”

Jerry pulled open a wooden blind and shouted, “Who’s there?”

His father’s voice replied, “Lucky I happened along when I did. An ugly rattler was wriggling, half dead from a wound, right along the path here and its mate was coiled in a sage bush watching it.”

Dora seized Dick’s arm. “I heard it!” she cried excitedly. “That’s what I heard when you began to – ”

“Aw, I say, Dora,” Dick was truly remorseful, “I’m terribly sorry. I just didn’t want you to be using your imagination and frightening yourself needlessly.”

Mary sank down on a dusty old box. “I’m absolutely limp,” she said. “Now, if a ghost appears when we open that trunk, I’ll simply collapse.”

CHAPTER XVI

SEARCHING FOR CLUES

The four young people in the loft listened as Mr. Newcomb closed the gate to the hen-yard, then, when they heard him leaving, Jerry said, “I reckon we’re alone now, so let’s get ahead with the box opening ceremony.”

“Oh, Big Brother,” Mary, quite recovered from her recent fright, exclaimed. “Let’s make a real ceremony of it, shall we? Let’s kneel on the floor; you boys at the sides and we girls at the ends. There now, let’s all lift at once and together.”

“Wait!” Dora cried, detaining them. “Just to add to the suspense, let’s each tell what we expect to find in the box.”

Mary looked across at her friend vaguely. “Why, I’m sure I don’t know. What do you hope that we’ll find, Jerry?”

“I reckon what we want to find is something that will help us locate Little Bodil,” the cowboy replied.

“And yet,” Dick put in wisely, “since Little Bodil was thrown from the stage coach forty years ago, how can anything that was already in her trunk prove to us whether she was devoured by wild animals or carried away by bandits?”

“Oh-oo!” Mary shuddered. “I don’t know which would be worse.”

Dora was agreeing with Dick. “You’re right of course,” she said thoughtfully, “but, nevertheless I’ve a hunch that we’ll find something that will, in some roundabout way, prove to us whether Little Bodil is dead or alive.”

“Now, if that’s settled, let the ceremony proceed,” Jerry announced. In the dim lantern light Mary’s fair face and Dora’s olive-tinted glowed with excited animation as they took hold of the trunk ends.

The top, however, did not come off as readily as they had anticipated. The many winter storms and the burning summer heat to which the box had been exposed had warped the cover, binding it tight. Jerry, glancing about the room, found a broken tool which he could use as a wedge. With it he loosened the cover. Then it was easily removed.

The first emotion was one of disappointment. The small trunk contained little, nothing at all, the young people decided, that could be considered as a clue. There was a plaid woolen dress for a child of about eight or ten and the coarsest of home-made underwear, knit stockings and a small pair of carpet slippers with patched soles.

A hand-carved wooden doll, in a plaid dress, which evidently had been made by the child, had been lovingly wrapped in a small red shawl. Lastly, tied up in a quilted blue bonnet with the strings, was a carved wooden bowl and spoon.

In the flickering lantern light, the expression on the four faces changed from eager excitement to genuine disappointment.

“Not a clue among them,” Dora announced dramatically.

“Not a line of writing of any kind, is there?” Mary was confident that she knew the answer to her question before she asked it.

Dick was closely scrutinizing the empty leather box. “Usually in mystery stories,” he looked up from his inspection to say, “there’s a lining in the trunk and the lost will, or, what have you, is safely reposing under it, but unfortunately Little Bodil’s trunk has no lining nor hide-it-away places of any kind.”

Mary was holding the small doll near to the lantern and the others saw tears in her pitying blue eyes. Suddenly she held the doll comfortingly close as she said, a sob in her voice, “Poor little old wooden dollie, all these long years you’ve been waiting, wondering, perhaps, why Little Bodil didn’t take you out and mother you.”

“Like Eugene Fields’ ‘Little Toy Dog,’” Dora said, looking lovingly at her friend. Then, “Mary, you can write the sweetest verses. Someday when we’re back at school, write about Little Bodil’s wooden doll. It may make you famous.” Then she modified, “At least it will help you fill space in ‘The Sunnybank Say-So.’”

“Promise to send me a copy if she does,” Jerry said.

Dick, who had not been listening, had at last given up hope of finding a scrap of writing. He had felt in the small pocket of the plaid dress and had closely examined the quilted hood.

“Well,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone, “since there isn’t a clue to be found, shall we put the things back into the trunk and go in?”

“I reckon we might as well,” Jerry acquiesced. “We’ll have to be up early tomorrow so that we can drive the girls over to Gleeson along about noon.”

Dora was examining the hand-carved wooden bowl and long wooden spoon. “I wonder if Little Bodil’s father made this leaf pattern on the handle,” she said, then began, jokingly, “If I were a trance medium, I would say, as I hold this article, I feel the presence of someone who, when alive in the flesh, dearly loved the child, Little Bodil. This someone, this spirit presence that we cannot see with our outward eyes, wishes very much to help us find a clue.” Dora’s voice had become mysteriously low.

Lifting her eyes slowly from the wooden bowl, she gazed intently at a dark corner where junk was piled.

Mary’s gaze followed. “Goodness, Dora!” she implored nervously, “don’t stare that way into space. Anyone would think that you saw someone and – ”

“I’m not sure but that I do see something.” Dora’s tone had changed to one of startled seriousness. “Jerry,” she continued, pointing toward the dark corner, “don’t you see a palely luminous object over there?”

“I reckon I do,” the cowboy agreed. “But one thing I’m sure is, it can’t be a ghost since there isn’t any such thing.”

“How do we know that – ” Dora began when Mary, clutching her friend’s arm, whispered excitedly, “I see it now! Oh, Jerry, if it isn’t a ghost, what is it?”

“We’ll soon know.” There was no fear in the cowboy’s voice as he leaped to his feet and walked toward the corner. The girls watched breathlessly expecting to see the apparition fade into darkness, but, if anything, it seemed clearer, as Jerry approached it.

His hearty laugh dispelled their fears before he explained, “The moon is rising. That’s moonlight coming in through a long crack in the wall.” Then, with a shrug which told his disbelief in all things supernatural, he dismissed the subject with, “I reckon that’s as near being a ghost as anything ever is.”

Mary was tenderly placing the coarse little undergarments back into the small trunk. Dora less sentimental than her friend, nevertheless felt a pitying sadness in her heart as she refolded the little plaid dress and laid it on top. Before closing the box, Mary, still on her knees, looked up at Jerry, her eyes luminous. “Big Brother,” she said, “do you think Little Bodil would mind if I kept her doll? It’s a funny, homely little thing with only a wooden heart, but I can’t get over feeling that it’s lonesome and needs comforting.”

Jerry’s gray eyes were very gentle as he looked down at the girl. His voice was a bit husky as he replied, “I reckon Little Bodil would be grateful to you if she knew. She probably set a store by that doll baby.”

He held out a strong brown hand to help her to rise and there was a tenderness in the clasp.

Dora had not packed the wooden bowl and spoon. “I would so like to keep these,” she said, adding hastily, “Of course, if Little Bodil is found, I’ll give them back to her. Don’t you think it would be all right?”

“Sure thing!” Dick replied. Stooping, he picked up the worn little carpet slippers, saying, “You overlooked these, girls, while you were packing.”

“Oh, so we did.” Dora reached up a hand to take them, then she hesitated, inquiring, “Why don’t you and Jerry each take one for a keepsake, or don’t boys care for such things?” Dick took one of the slippers and dropped it, unconcernedly, into a deep leather pocket. The other slipper he handed to Jerry who stowed it away. The boys replaced the cover of the box, not without difficulty, and then they all four stood for a silent moment looking down at it with varying emotions. Mary spoke in a small awed voice. “What shall we do with the little box?”

“I reckoned we’d leave it here,” Jerry began, then asked, “What were you thinking about it?”

“I was wondering,” Mary said, looking from one to another with large star-like eyes, “if it wouldn’t be a good plan to take the box up to the rock house and leave it there.”

“Why, Mary Moore,” Dora was frankly amazed, “you wouldn’t dare climb up there and be looked at by that Evil Eye Turquoise, would you?”

Before Mary could reply, Jerry said, “The plan is a good one, all right, but we’d better leave it here, I reckon, till we know if there’s any way to get up to the rock house. The cliff that broke off in front of it used to be Mr. Pedersen’s stairway.”

Mary agreed and so they ascended the wall ladder. As they stood in the harness-room below, Mary said in a low voice, “Although we have not found a clue, that trunk has done one thing; it has made me feel in my heart that Little Bodil was a real child. Before, it seemed to me more like a fanciful story. Now, more than ever, I hope that somewhere we will find a clue that will someday prove to us that no harm came to the little girl.”

Jerry had picked up the second lantern and, taking Mary’s arm, he led her through the low door and along the dark path. Neither spoke. Dora and Dick followed, walking single file. Dora, remembering the dead snakes, glanced about, but Mr. Newcomb had thoughtfully buried them, not wishing the girls to be needlessly startled.

At the kitchen door, the boys said good night and returned to their bunk house out near the corral.

CHAPTER XVII

A WOODEN DOLL

The girls, with the lantern Jerry had given them, tip-toed through the darkened hall to their bedroom. Mary placed the lantern on the table, and, after having kissed the little wooden doll good night, she put it to bed on a cushioned chair. She smiled wistfully up at Dora. “What is there about even a poor forlorn homely wooden doll that stirs in one’s heart a sort of mother love?”